Who told YOU that you
"Can't Dance?" Did you hear teasing comments in your childhood from your brother, sister, friends, . . .who told you how silly you look, Or did you take an adult dance lesson only to hear a long list of corrections from the teacher telling you "how wrong your feet are" and all the things you were doing wrong. so all you really learned was "How bad of a dancer I am" Or, more likely, did such a discouraging comment come from your own mouth, or from inside your own head? Was it YOU who said that? Because usually our worst critic is our OWN SELF... right? And no way you want to risk embarrassment. BUT... what if no one is looking? What if instead of looking dumb, you actually look good? Or if someone else did say it, negative comments can echo for years in our brains Some discouraging words that another person said without thought, often that they didn't even mean, or intend. Maybe such words were said as an attempted joke. Happens all day long these days in our modern culture. It's an easy target to make fun of -- someone's beginning to try a new kind of physical activity, especially dancing. Or any attempt at creative expression. Comedy sketches are full of them. But actually that's more often a symptom of defensiveness -- about their own nervous insecurity. A put-down of another person is a (wrong) way of making oneself feel superior? And criticizing words are often said in our culture way too easily, the person not even being serious about it. Too often, criticism sticks in our brain like Velcro, but compliments fall off like Teflon. Yeah, sure those Dancing with the Stars celebrities look great (Cheryl Burke I still love you) But no way you want to show your lack of skill in front of any audience, right? Why risk embarrassment. BUT... what if no one is looking? OR, what if instead of looking dumb, you actually look good? What if you look super COOOOOL dancing? Hmmmm?? BECAUSE... when you are feeling the rhythm of the dance steps, well, golly, gee willikers... its a PROVEN FACT that... It's a solid law of Nature, an immutable rule physics, an indisputable pillar of psychology. that, when YOU ARE FEELING GOOD dancing. You look great! Extremely attractive, in fact. Yes, finding that happy FEELING in dance, will DEFINITELY make you LOOK GOOD, look VERY good in fact. and prove all those negative critics wrong, including yourself. But in order to start FEELING good while dancing ... you've got to actually START DANCING.... so why not start NOW?
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By Peggy Pollard, Santa Cruz Waltz Swing www.PeggyDance.weebly.com
by Peggy P.
Fourth of July holiday yesterday: A bit toooo quiet here at the foggy beach what with Scotts Valley being ... perhaps Ooo-verly punctual? (a day early with their fireworks? really??) our intentions of catching that show fizzled out . Then last night's Main Beach fog was so thick, even thicker than "whirled-peas" soup ... that, though I heard muffled sounds of rockets bursting in air I saw not one tiny flash of light whatsoever through the grey mist. Brrr... Grrrr.... Nevertheless, yesterday was our national moment of celebration, to join together as one nation, to feel ourselves being part of a much bigger, grander community, and celebrate together, just because we ARE. So I watched it on TV. AND.... I am now IN LOVE with the sparkling host of the TV fireworks show from Washington DC's Capitol Mall, -- my personal Independence Day hoopla last night, while husband Bob was already fast asleep for the night-- --featuring Miss Mickey Guyton! (whom I had never heard of until then) She is the MOST all American person ever. She is THE perfect shining star to unite our country with what we need MOST at this dire time of national hostility-- respect and musical love. Her credentials-- She’s from Texas. (thus the "Y'ALLs") She’s black (and sings about that). She’s a woman. A young vivacious woman. Her energetic persona is down to earth, and friendly, but her singing is straight outta heaven. In fact she was introduced as having created a hit song that is now becoming THE NEW ANTHEM for America. (Aint we A-A-A-LL) “All American” Songstress Mickey is poetically uniting all corners of our very polarized American society. . . with a simple thrumming tune. It's lyrics call out to the opposite corners of our nation, that we are "James Brown and James Dean" ... "hand-me-down, tailor made, Daisy Dukes, dookie braids" ... "We got the same stars, same stripes, just wanna live that good life..." I'm now mesmerized and infatuated with this young woman who is now literally changing hearts all over America, starting with a small but significant act of unification. In her climactic performance song, she requested that each of us in the audience take our cell phone, turn on the flashlight app (!) hold up it up and wave our lights while we sang the anthem together. Thousands of people packed across the Capital Mall did this. The scene of thousands of lights shining from the great crown was brilliant, each one a small light, but together was a carpet of brilliance shinging in the dusk. So I even did mine too at home, though no one else saw it. And thus, literally from coast to coast of the USA, from DC to the cliffs of Santa Cruz, this singer orchestrated us to shine our individual lights, for truth, forgiveness and love . . . as the fireworks began boom, boom, booming over their heads in the nations capital, and on my TV screen, and in my soul. It was awesome. Although I admit the show was a bit too light in dancing..., except the song "She Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor, did bring me to my feet for a solo Hustle dance. And there was the celebration of one of the best musical dance shows of all time.. "West Side Story"... but more dance in the Capitol performance would have been even better. Nonetheless, this show was just the healing spark our country needs right now So hey y’all… let’s carry on Mickey’s lit-up spirit in our dancing. Let's fill our dance space wherever you are in the USA... or the world... (Hey! I mean YOU my friends in Shanghai, and Chengdu China, and Kasese, Uganda and Tamil Nadu, India yes, YOU! Light up your space with your spirit, dance it out into your world with positivity and grace. Happy Dancing y'all... cuz y'ALL are ALL Americans, so let's shine our lights of love and truth on the dance floor! -- Teacher Peggy published in Santa Cruz Sentinel, YOUNG AT HEART June, 30 2022
By Peggy Pollard, Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing When I open the door to the empty dance hall, I see nothing but the floor. I feel nothing but a lovely emptiness. Like that first scoop of vanilla ice cream, the first words on a blank paper, the first notes of a beautiful song, this uncluttered cleanness of the room draws me in like a cool blue pool of water on a sweltering day. The polished wood floor is a blank canvas, ready for our feet to paint a fresh picture. As I step into this empty room I am also stepping into the best cure for BRAMOOLIAP disease. Yes that dreaded, and wayyyyy too common mental disease: “Brain Random Access Memory Overload Of Life Issues And Problems” BRAMOOLIAP! It’s the terrible disease that we are all vulnerable to. But good news! We have a cure for BRAMOOLIAP. The cure is to forget. When our personal computers or phones start glitching, overloaded with too many commands and data, flying across their electrical nodes, they often need to shut down, to reboot and rebuild their complex network connections inside. Human brains are far more complex than computers. But we likewise often need to find good ways to shutdown and reboot our minds. This allows our mind and emotions to renew and rebuild. A reboot lets us sort through our experiences, disentangle and refresh our thoughts and feelings, to find peace with the world, and peace in our psyche. A new environment with new people helps us do this. We each need mental sanctuaries. My suede-soled practice ballroom shoes click softly on the varnished wood floor as I walk across the dance floor. As I prepare myself to teach this morning’s dance lesson, I work hard to remember -- my form, my rhythms, the proper instructions for the dance patterns, to sharpen my brain to move in new ways. But I also try hard to forget. In this room I shut off the worrying part of my brain to forget all my cares and worries of the week. I turn on the waltz and swing music. Mike walks in with a confident smile on his face. Other dancers arrive and absorb our cheerful vibes, creating a small happy community of harmony, encouraging and uplifting each other dance by dance, song by song, until the outside world disappears. In this room only happy positivity is allowed to enter. But the outside world’s worries are strong. It’s gloom hovers always just outside the door. Indeed, we all have so many problems to worry about these days, worldwide and personal, that our brains are constantly, hard at work, day and night, trying to solve them. Like a big ball of many tangled threads, our minds get overwhelmed trying to disentangle them all. For example, stewing in my own mind right now are: this month’s Congressional hearings on the attempted overthrow of our government, fires, floods, tsunamis, famines, earthquake, global pestilence, wars and the gradual destruction of our entire earth’s ecosystem, dooming our entire earth population. All are true and merit everyone worrying about. In addition to that, I’m also mentally calculating whether my powder blue socks coordinate with my purple shorts; what is that strange buzzing noise in the corner of the kitchen, and whether on my last zoom I sounded like a doofus or a cool genius? But those questions are quickly overrided by thoughts on why did my husband snap back at me when I very nicely and reasonably requested he move his annoying clutter of iced tea bottles off the kitchen shelf…which then instantly re-ignited our ongoing territorial tiffs about our limited home space? Tomorrow I’ll find a whole new set of worries, I’m sure. Yes, our lives are full of layers and layers of worries big and small. But too much worrying, to the point of overwhelm is bad, definitely bad, for our mental and physical health. Even the healthiest of us are feeling it, including our vibrant university students. UCSC’s Psychological and Counseling service staff, Dr. Richard Enriquez reports that, in the past two years during covid isolation UCSC has seen a big rise in reports of anxiety, depression and many symptoms of mental illness campus-wide. Yes the dreaded (and far too common) disease BRAMOOLIAP is hitting us all. What then is the cure? How do we help our minds let go of the powerful worries clouding our thoughts? First finding a happy PLACE, a beautiful place, to put ourselves in, is a good start. A ballroom is great for that. Walking into a clean, safe room devoted to dance powerfully focuses our entire attention. But we can still bring the anxieties in our head with us into the dance hall. So we need something more to override those gnawing, negative thoughts in our brains We need even bigger, stronger thoughts to push them out. An urgent physical task in front of you works great for that. Moving our bodies, especially to music, is powerful to lift us out of our cluttered thinking into a beautiful communion with other people. Doing positive physical actions face to face with another human works great for squeezing out those sticky BRAMOOLIAP from our minds. Dancing with a partner is just the ticket. The music starts. Mike holds up his left hand in a “V.” I place my right hand in his. We connect in closed position. Worries begone! For an hour or two, I’ve forgotten about the outside world. My mind is filled only with the dance we are doing. Yes. The cure for this awful BRAMOOLIAP disease is working. Partner dancing is definitely the strong and refreshing elixir needed to cure that terrible happiness-destroying disease of BRAMOOLIAP. We dance to remember… And, happily, we dance to forget. Published May 26, Sentinel Newspaper Young At Heart
by Peggy Pollard, Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing www.PeggyDance.weebly.com Thursday, April 28, 2022, Cooper Street, downtown Santa Cruz. “Dancing In the Streets” dance performance festival. 6:39 pm: Surrounded by a cheering audience, our six dancers took a deep breath and stepped onto the stage for our world premier dance performance. This was our great moment of glory for our small, newly formed band of Waltz & Swing performers. We were feeling good, I’d say, even great, on average. But as often happens in such events, our confidence only solidified a scant hour before performance time, when we finally got to rehearse for the first time as a complete group. REWIND to 5 pm: After weeks of planning and fretting, an hour before performance, our final rehearsal solidifies our dancing. First, because we look so dang GOOD, all dressed in sophisticated black and white. Then, dancing in a circle, we give each other visual cues. We each get swept into our group momentum. Ragged skills smooth out. Every repetition feels better and better. We relax into the music, channel it through our hands and feet. We are in a “State of Flow” just in time for peak performance. 5:59 pm: All last glitches are smoothed out. Our cloud of worries evaporates into relief and delight. But for two dancers the stress still lingers. Not only new at performing, they had only recently learned the basics of Waltz & Swing dance. One having only practiced online with a broom. But they trusted the rest of us seasoned performers, who calmly assured them it would all turn out OK. And just in time, it was all working. We walked over to Cooper Street stage. Waiting amongst the audience we giggled with nervous energy. Ready or not, it was time to show the world what we’ve got. There is something so scary about a stage. It is so . . . PUBLIC! There it was, the 20-foot square Marley dance flooring taped on the asphalt of Cooper Street. But it was not the empty gray space that was so scary. It was the boisterous throng of people crowded around it. Rows of children sitting cross-legged at the edge of the stage, gaggles of cheering teens, glowing after their performances of ballet, hip-hop, lyrical dances, for clusters of admiring parents and assorted street people. “Don’t worry” I reassured my dancers, surveying the crowd of 100 around us. ”No one will be watching us.” “Wwwhatttt??” Confused stares melted into giggles, as my joke sunk in. Haha. Their unspoken jitters were defused. This fear of public performance is powerful, hard to shake off. The nervous tension. The cold dread in the deep pit of your stomach. Vague fears lurk about of not only imperfection but a deeper foreboding of mysterious doom. Perhaps fear that your very worth as a person is under public scrutiny? Sounds a bit absurd when I write it out loud, though. doesn’t it? And yet, somehow that fear inhabits deep within many of us, robbing us of our joy of sharing beautiful things in public. Why is that fear so strong? Risk of humiliation – fear of public shame -- is deep and universal. In fact, it underlies the number one fear of most people worldwide--public speaking. According to Toastmasters, the international coaching program for public speaking skills, many people even fear public speaking more than even death itself! And what is dance, but a form of public speaking? Dancers communicate our messages through movement, as we were about to do on Cooper Street stage. So how can we be freed from this nagging, often exaggerated, fear? By tapping into an even deeper primal instinct -- our need to connect. The flip side of fear is trust. Joining with fellow humans in positive physical activities like dance, gives a wonderful sense of security. We feel safe when we feel valued, accepted, affirmed. No matter how skillful I am, (or not) it’s the fact of WHO I am dancing, that sparks my joy in social dancing. As I saw yesterday down in Cowells Cove -- the largest group of Brown Pelicans I’ve ever seen in the waters. A thousand birds floating, fluttering wings, skimming above undulating waves, diving into the water to scoop up mouthfuls of anchovies. Their choreography was rhythmic, sublime, each bird individually free to move as they please, yet held together in harmony, feasting on the abundant fish below. The Pelicans cared not one whit what I thought of them. No worrying “are we clever, cool or good enough?” No. They just moving in spectacular joy with waves, wind and water. Our public dancing likewise is our opportunity for glory. It wields a cultural power to touch other lives. Our heightened nerves are because we also know our performance will be recorded into public history, etched permanently into the psyche of our audience. 6:40 pm: Back on Cooper Street stage, we join hands and begin. First steps into the circle center. 1 – 2 – 3 – KICK! Anxiety melts into excitement. We see each other, feel each other’s hands bouncing swinging forward, slipping into a bigger group rhythm. Back out, lean forward, KICK! All turn left, raise arms up, pumping hands high to the sky. Glory Be! We are a dance team! 6:46 : I notice an older couple smiling on the sidelines, imitating our dance. Then another. Wow! Our dance joy is spreading. Not from impressive skills, but the joy we shine in dancing 6:49 pm: We bow to our cheering audience, feeling the joyful glory of dancing together, lifting each other up into higher strata of happiness than we can possibly reach on our own. So let us be like the Pelicans flowing together in their Pelican dance. Jump into the glory of dance with us and scoop up the bounty of joy into your life. published in SC Sentinel, May 26, byPeggy Pollard, Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing
Thursday, April 28, 2022: Cooper Street, downtown Santa Cruz. “Dancing In the Streets” dance performance festival. 6:39 pm: Surrounded by a cheering audience, our six dancers took a deep breath and stepped onto the stage for our world premier dance performance. This was our great moment of glory for our small, newly formed band of Waltz & Swing performers. We were feeling good, I’d say, even great, on average. But as often happens in such events, our confidence only solidified a scant hour before performance time, when we finally got to rehearse for the first time as a complete group. REWIND to 5 pm: After weeks of planning and fretting, an hour before performance, our final rehearsal solidifies our dancing. First, because we look so dang GOOD, all dressed in sophisticated black and white. Then, dancing in a circle, we give each other visual cues. We each get swept into our group momentum. Ragged skills smooth out. Every repetition feels better and better. We relax into the music, channel it through our hands and feet. We are in a “State of Flow” just in time for peak performance. 5:59 pm: All last glitches are smoothed out. Our cloud of worries evaporates into relief and delight. But for two dancers the stress still lingers. Not only new at performing, they had only recently learned the basics of Waltz & Swing dance. One having only practiced online with a broom. But they trusted the rest of us seasoned performers, who calmly assured them it would all turn out OK. And just in time, it was all working. We walked over to Cooper Street stage. Waiting amongst the audience we giggled with nervous energy. Ready or not, it was time to show the world what we’ve got. There is something so scary about a stage. It is so . . . PUBLIC! There it was, the 20-foot square Marley dance flooring taped on the asphalt of Cooper Street. But it was not the empty gray space that was so scary. It was the boisterous throng of people crowded around it. Rows of children sitting cross-legged at the edge of the stage, gaggles of cheering teens, glowing after their performances of ballet, hip-hop, lyrical dances, for clusters of admiring parents and assorted street people. “Don’t worry” I reassured my dancers, surveying the crowd of 100 around us. ”No one will be watching us.” “Wwwhatttt??” Confused stares melted into giggles, as my joke sunk in. Haha. Their unspoken jitters were defused. This fear of public performance is powerful, hard to shake off. The nervous tension. The cold dread in the deep pit of your stomach. Vague fears lurk about of not only imperfection but a deeper foreboding of mysterious doom. Perhaps fear that your very worth as a person is under public scrutiny? Sounds a bit absurd when I write it out loud, though. doesn’t it? And yet, somehow that fear inhabits deep within many of us, robbing us of our joy of sharing beautiful things in public. Why is that fear so strong? Risk of humiliation – fear of public shame -- is deep and universal. In fact, it underlies the number one fear of most people worldwide--public speaking. According to Toastmasters, the international coaching program for public speaking skills, many people even fear public speaking more than even death itself! And what is dance, but a form of public speaking? Dancers communicate our messages through movement, as we were about to do on Cooper Street stage. So how can we be freed from this nagging, often exaggerated, fear? By tapping into an even deeper primal instinct -- our need to connect. The flip side of fear is trust. Joining with fellow humans in positive physical activities like dance, gives a wonderful sense of security. We feel safe when we feel valued, accepted, affirmed. No matter how skillful I am, (or not) it’s the fact of WHO I am dancing, that sparks my joy in social dancing. As I saw yesterday down in Cowells Cove -- the largest group of Brown Pelicans I’ve ever seen in the waters. A thousand birds floating, fluttering wings, skimming above undulating waves, diving into the water to scoop up mouthfuls of anchovies. Their choreography was rhythmic, sublime, each bird individually free to move as they please, yet held together in harmony, feasting on the abundant fish below. The Pelicans cared not one whit what I thought of them. No worrying “are we clever, cool or good enough?” No. They just moving in spectacular joy with waves, wind and water. Our public dancing likewise is our opportunity for glory. It wields a cultural power to touch other lives. Our heightened nerves are because we also know our performance will be recorded into public history, etched permanently into the psyche of our audience. 6:40 pm: Back on Cooper Street stage, we join hands and begin. First steps into the circle center. 1 – 2 – 3 – KICK! Anxiety melts into excitement. We see each other, feel each other’s hands bouncing swinging forward, slipping into a bigger group rhythm. Back out, lean forward, KICK! All turn left, raise arms up, pumping hands high to the sky. Glory Be! We are a dance team! 6:46 : I notice an older couple smiling on the sidelines, imitating our dance. Then another. Wow! Our dance joy is spreading. Not from impressive skills, but the joy we shine in dancing 6:49 pm: We bow to our cheering audience, feeling the joyful glory of dancing together, lifting each other up into higher strata of happiness than we can possibly reach on our own. So let us be like the Pelicans flowing together in their Pelican dance. Jump into the glory of dance with us and scoop up the bounty of joy into your life. By Peggy Pollard, Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing www.PeggyDance.weebly.com
Along with our springtime appearance of hummingbirds, lilacs, and elephant seals, our Santa Cruz social dance communities are re-emerging too, from our two-year Great Dance Hibernation. Some dance programs, like February Asparagus, have already sprouted early, while others come later, forming slowly but powerfully, like our apples and elephant seals. Meanwhile, our social dancers have now re-shuffled into two strata. A stubborn few like myself, never stopped dancing, continuing online and wherever we could safely find dance partners. We are now rewarded with continuing dance stamina, able to enjoy long sessions of hearty polkas and invigorating swing dances. But sadly, most other dancers gave up when in-person dances closed. They lost their dancing strength, are now winded by a mere song or two, have grown mushy in brain, flagging in footwork. For these sad dropouts who lost their momentum, the barriers to returning to dance look high. So we must help them (you?) overcome, by understanding their many powerful reasons to NOT return to our social dancing goodness! REASON #10. I love my UNHEALTHY HABITS that make me feel bad. Perhaps overdosing on, well so many substances are available to abuse, but let’s just name two examples: Cheetos (as described in Weird Al’s “Inactive” song parody) and simply inactivity -- sitting too much. Harvard Medicine Health News reports in this week’s article “The Worst Habits for Your Brain,’ that the average adult sits for six-and-a-half hours per day, and all this chair time does a number on the brain. A 2018 study of people ages 45 - 75, showed more hours sitting per day correlated with cognitive decline and dementia. So if you PREFER to welcome dementia sooner, best to avoid social dancing, or other vigorous physical activity that prevents it. Also, Cheeto dust repels dance partners. REASON #9. I want to keep feeling DEPRESSED. Hearing bad news that you cannot take any action to change causes depression. Our past two decades of global warming, six years of political turmoil, two years of COVID panic, and our last two months of horrible war, we are all prone to deep despair. Social dancing is, of course, a potent antidote for depression. Even small movements to music are powerful vectors for big happy feelings, changing our psyche’s direction from passivity to purposeful positivity. Even if you cannot change the actual bad news, you CAN change yourself, starting with a single, musical step, triggering happy hormones to start flowing. But if you prefer your negative gloom, then definitely do NOT start tapping your feet to “Can’t Stop the Feelin.’ ” REASON #8. I have NOTHING TO CELEBRATE. Not the sinking of Russia’s Moskva flagship aircraft carrier. No birthdays, holidays, weddings, losing a pound, starting a new job, quitting that job, births, deaths, anniversaries--just a grey continuum of a joyless life. Yecchhh. It works. I feel depressed all over again. REASON #7. I don’t want to CONNECT WITH POSITIVE PEOPLE. One can dance alone, to be sure. But physical contact, however slight, creates a powerful change of mood. Palm to palm, arm around shoulder or waist, even pinky finger to pinky finger, if structured safely, gives a close sense of companionship, a deep feeling of community as you move in harmonious partnership with another human body. So don’t touch, if you prefer to feel isolated. REASON #6. I don’t want to FIND ROMANCE. A respectable reason to not dance, especially if you already have a romantic partner. But you might also develop safe friendships to share magical sparks of romance in the partner dancing itself—for only a 3-minute commitment. So be sure NOT to do that if you DON’T want to feel any twinges of romantic playfulness. REASON #5. With our flood of WEDDING INVITATIONS this spring, I prefer to be a party-pooper. Avoid irrational exuberance on the dance floor in our post-covid wedding whirlwind. Glowering in a dark & lonely corner while everyone else jumps for joy to celebrate bride and groom will ensure I am forever remembered as the bump-on-a-log grumpy old uncle/aunt friend/ bridesmaid by my favorite bride & groom. REASON #4. I AM the Bride/Groom! But I don’t want to kick off my own post-ceremony celebration in an optimistic way… best to not get my new spouse’s hopes up. Simpler to skip delighting him/her and save our energy for petty arguments due to lack of shared joyful moments. REASON #3. I DON’T LIKE MUSIC. Since I don’t know how to find the beat of the music, I don’t know how to launch a social dance with a partner. So better to not learn how, even though a good teacher like Peggy can teach me. My soul is better off not being awakened from my cold, sterile hibernation. REASON #2. I DON’T WANT TO LEARN new ways of moving. Best to not explore my brain’s learning capacity -- 10% usage should be plenty. REASON #1. I like to USE MY TIME INEFFICIENTLY with many simple activities that satisfy only small parts of my body-mind-soul self, thus feeling always unfinished and unsatisfied. An elderly lawyer I know recently noticed his diminishing of mental and physical agilities. So he learned new hobbies to strengthen each skill: juggling, playing a musical instrument, calisthenics. Each one helped in a specific way. But the single activity of social dancing gives a wide variety of such benefits for your body, mind and soul in the least amount of time. So definitely DON’T partner dance, because, by golly, that would benefit all those areas in less time! (Unless you would rather get happier quicker, and find something better to do with all your leftover hours?) Wasn't our glorious 2022 Winter Olympics awesome this month? Watching those snowboarders tumble across the sky, ski jumpers fly, Cross country skiers sail. . . and then the figure skaters: Nathan Chen, Papadadakis & Cizeron, Chock & Bates soaring so spectacularly across the ice is breathtaking ehhh?
Now, let’s channel our fresh inspiration and consider what we can learn from those new world champion athletes that we can apply to our own humble journeys in learning to social dance. As well as being thrilled by their great talent and years of discipline, here we will take a closer look in particular at the way several kinds of Olympic champions use special footwork techniques to achieve success moving across snow and ice in their respective sports. You see, your feet are the mechanical foundation of movement for your whole body. Once you change the way your feet move, you change the way your whole body moves. Though your feet are only a small body part, just a few square inches that bear your weight into the floor, they are a big lever for steering your 50-to-300-ish pounds of body weight into any direction. Amazing! Thus, even tiny changes in your footwork will trigger a cascade of movements above. Your feet are the fulcrum for even a little effort to shift your stack of body parts, right up to the top of your head. A slight shift of your weight over your feet will make a big shift in the balancing, counterbalancing and leveraging of each block of your body weight. That’s why sports coaches worldwide make sure to include footwork in their trainings Do your footwork correctly, with proper muscle and joint alignment, and you will strengthen your toes, ankles and knees, align your spine, uplift your torso, solidify your shoulders, free up your arms, stretch up your head, and center all into a beautfiul posture. Your body, properly aligned with hips over feet, shoulders over hips, becomes a perfectly proportioned work of art, a living sculpture. You will then be able to delightfully connect with symmetrical counterbalance to your likewise finely-tuned dance partner. So yes, wonderful results await you when you do your footwork right. But first, let's get back to the beginning. Let’s start with putting our feet on a path towards excellence -- Olympic level excellence! So we’ll head back to the Olympics to see what we can learn. First, let’s start with my favorite winter sport: Ski Jumping! It’s all about a perfectly balanced launch, right? Let’s try it: First, stand upright and still, feet under you, shoulder width apart. Your imaginary Ski Jumping Skis pointed straight forward under you. Swing your arms back as you bend your knees, keeping your head up, then as you swing arms forward rise up onto the front ball of your foot and slowly swing your arms forward and up. See how long you can balance up high before swinging arms down again and lowering onto flat foot, bending your knees. Try it again a few times, pushing your feet into the ground, squeezing the muscles of your legs together to stabilize them. Still wobbly? Now try to squeeze the muscles of your knees, back, shoulders all to the center of your body and lifted up. You did? Great! Are you ready to go out on the ski jump now and try it there? Me neither, so let's just pretend, right here on our safe kitchen floors. Now, let's try cross country skiing. Here we learn to line up our feet like they have big giant skis. In the Ski-Athlon the first half was the old-fashioned style of cross country skiing which is toes pointed straight ahead sliding your feet straight forward and back. This is what we do in Waltz aiming feet straight forward, efficiently getting the most distance with each step Try it right now : line up your toes to point straightforward. As you step your feet are rolling through each foot lifting the heel up from behind you so you get maximum smooth distance The second half of the SkiAthlon was the more modern style of footwork. You push your feet back diagonally to get more power from them. This causes you to rock back-and-forth, diagonally side-to-side. This is also the motion used more in speed ice-skating, to efficiently get the most power from each step, with not only the foot pushing diagonally back but your bodies and arms swinging diagonally forward. Now let’s adapt this to Waltz. Swinging your body diagonally forward three steps to the left then three steps to the right. Feel it adding more power to your waltzing? Like an Olympian waltzer! Not only is footwork critical in the sliding, gliding sports of snow & ice, but even Martial Arts coaches proclaim the value, though for more violent goals: “Footwork allows us to do 3 things:
In a gentler view, Harvard Healthbeat advocates we start simply with walking. “It improves your cardiovascular health and can help your circulation, muscle tone, and mood. When you walk, you put your foot through its full range of motion, from the time your heel hits the ground until you lift off with your toes.” The goal of proper footworks, explains Vern Gambetta, President of Gambetta Sports Training Systems, is “control of and positioning the center of gravity... keeping the hips over the base of support if stability is desired, or shifting the center of gravity outside the base of support to initiate movement and change direction.” In other words, keeping your balance, Speaking of which … how about those awesome ice dancer couples! With just a couple more of our SCW&S lessons, perhaps you'll be ready for that incredible Olympic sport… he he – ha ha - uh ohhhh … I can hear the vigorous rattles of your head shaking from here. OK realistically you probably won’t actually DO what those champion ice dancers are doing . . . but you can FEEL like you are. Yes, that glorious feeling IS achievable. Even in just a few lessons you can feel the difference in your walking, in your posture and grace. And that is how YOU can start transforming your body into a dancer's body —from the feet up. By Peggy Pollard, Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing, www.PeggyDance.weebly.com
Just as my finger hovered above the “send” button of my dance news email, I quavered. A sinking feeling weighed down my gut like a cannon ball. Wrong! It felt so wrong. I scanned again the Sentinel Omicron news alerts…agonized … texted my dance friends… The first week of January is always our biggest launch of the year. New students jump into classes with five months of Spring stretching out on their calendars. It’s the perfect time for dance dreamers step onto their long-desired path to learning how to gracefully partner dance. For months I’d been planning for this week. But, in a huge disappointment to, well, to the whole world, January 2022 is spent in social quarantine. Again. After our normal December holidays, our dancers are eager to waltz and swing back into our dance hall, whirling face-to-face with a partner around the room, bouncing into tuck turns and arm slides. But NO. It was just not safe. Visions of waltzing Omicron germs floating around my head, I sighed, revised my email, and cancelled our January in-person dances. No, not on my watch will we risk the health of any dancers. Even with dancers fully vaxxed and masked, we must prevent spread of this new super-contagious variant, now causing much global suffering and death. But the upside to Omicron, or, at least to our pausing so many events to prevent it, is that we have been around this block before. Now we’ve learned how to live better at home than two years ago in that first COVID panic. Now we simply slip our masks back on and dust off our familiar shelter-at-home habits. We’ve done this before. So how do we get through it? We get through it together -- online! More and more dancers are experiencing the big value of online dancing during COVID and for the many other reasons they can’t meet in person. Classes now flip easily between in-person, zoom, and hybrid sessions. ONLINE DANCE BENEFITS: Though not as wonderful as feeling your partner’s weight against your arms, online dances are 80% as effective to keep up our dance skills, fitness and spirits. Online dancers can see each other and talk together, encouraging complementing, flirting, cracking jokes. And your dancing is real. While dancing solely in online classes in 2020, Mike says his health improved, he lost weight and was able to cut down on certain medications. Happily, we now have a global proliferation, nay, a Tsunami, of online exercise in many forms. Yet so many online exercise programs feel so… unsatisfying. Some require thousands of $$ to buy a fancy big machine, plus monthly membership fees, all for getting you to do only one, or a few types of movements! Riding a stationary bicycle or lifting weights has limited benefits, not teaching you new useful or creative skills. Fancy videos to pretend you are moving, or a fake person coaching you… mehhh for such expensive tricks. You will soon tire of monotonous virtual routines. Even with real people, the same exercise over & over, especially non-interactive, is boring, NOT satisfying. So which online exercise programs best satisfy our important needs? Ones with: REAL COMMUNITY -- Being online with real people to see and talk with is highly satisfying, for our important human need for social connection. INTERACTIVE -- “Judith,” though highly educated, had never learned how to follow in dancing until our Swing class this fall. It’s a fascinating skill that can be taught, even online to some extent. While online obviously limits physical contact, verbal and visual interaction are still possible. Even some lead and follow dance skills can be done giving simple visual cues. Giggling will ensue. Try it! TEACHING NEW SKILLS -- Many partner dancing skills can be taught online, giving more valuable solo practice time to improve dance agility and enjoyment until dancing in-person again. While any exercise helps our body, our minds are hungry to keep learning new skills, new patterns, new ways of moving, helping prevent Alzheimer’s and keeping our mental cognition strong. Partner dancing is THE BEST exercise for this, says Stanford University’s Social Dance Department Chair, Richard Powers, citing many medical studies. LOW IMPACT – Dancer “Phil” recently fell playing pickleball, with severe injuries. He vowed to me that, as soon as fully recovered, he’s coming back to our much safer, low-impact partner dancing. Partner dancing has much fewer injuries than most other sports. In fact, good dance partners hold each other up, protecting each other from injury. Even online, few activities give as rewarding, SATISFYING a feeling as partner dancing. Face-to-face in harmonious, win-win movement, gives us social satisfaction, even during Omicron, though, hopefully a pause much shorter than last year’s. Ahhhhh This week an undersea volcano erupted in Tonga sending a global Tsunami wave. Our nation is also in a political tsunami. But don’t worry, social dancing solves ALL those world problems. Dancing puts YOU in a happy, healthy state to handle all that life brings you. Dancing is your undersea volcano of joy, sending waves of goodness around your world. But YOUR hardest part is taking that first step. So right now, in our Omicron pause, reboot your exercise life in a satisfying new direction Take YOUR first step now into our wonderful world of ONLINE partner dancing. Your future partners will thank you. Visit www.PeggyDance.weebly.com By Peggy Pollard, Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing www.PeggyDance.weebly.com
An army of 2,000 happy social dancers -- this is what our world needs most in the New Year. From our Market St. dance hall to the sea life of the Monterey Bay, from the Amazon to Shanghai, dancing joins our world in a celebration of joy like nothing else. As our dancing year now draws to a close, let us review our past 12 months of happy progress. In 2021 our Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing made small but valiant growth, launching more people in quantum leaps up to higher happiness in their lives. Our 2021 footsteps -- stomping, bouncing, gliding, tapping, cha-cha-cha-ing, echo in Market St. Dance Hall, and in our memories. January -- Still in pandemic lockdown, Mike and I began our second COVID year of SCW&S partnering through the zoom glass. We fiddled with camera angles, sound level, for our weekly Wednesday evening and Sunday sunrise dances. A few local and international guests joined from Ethiopia, England, New York. A professor in from Shanghai China asked me to teach him the Polka step, so he could teach his students. February –Inspired by the amazing sea life of our Monterey Bay, our lessons learned from one sea creature per week, observing from their squiggly personalities, ways of movement we could imitate in our dancing. First, the playful sea otter, rolling and wiggling in perpetual motion added frolicking movement to our Swing dancing. Next, was the clam. Though anchored in one spot, clams can open and close their hinged shell. Likewise, swing partners hinge into open and closed positions. We went on to study the movements of the squid, the starfish, sea lions, jellyfish, octopus, and majestic grey whale. So much we learned from each! May -- After a year of careful COVID quarantining, we gladly took the miraculous gift of vaccinations. Thanks to a global army of medical researchers, we are now super-powered against those evil germs. July-- In-person dances re-start! Giggling, we shyly rediscover the delights of pressing flesh palms together. For those of us who kept practicing during our 1.5 years Shelter at Home, our partnering skills quickly return. New dancers joined in this fall, learning Waltz & Swing thrills with us. December – Huzzah! More dance venues re-open. Severino’s, Cubberley’s Ballroom, Friday Night Waltz -- my social dancing mother ship, a whirling group of genteel waltzers trained by Stanford University’s renowned Social Dance teacher, Dr. Richard Powers, himself. At FNW’s Christmas Dance I helped check forehead temperatures and vaccination records for more than 200 guests. I noticed most had lost much dancing fitness and I secretly gloated that, thanks to my continued dance practice, I was in better dance shape than many of that younger university crowd. If you are one of those COVID dance dropouts, don’t worry. By all means, DO jump back in to dance, after being FULLY VACCINATED, (ahem). You will be warmly welcomed back, along with the 90% of other dance delinquents, to stumble through it together and catch back up again quickly. But, for those few of us who kept it up, yeah, that feels sweet. Then, in a delightful finish to my dancing year, a new friend from Brazil joined our final dance. After our Waltz, Swing and Polka lesson; she taught us a Brazilian Samba, then an indigenous Amazon tribal dance from her area. Awesome! Now time to give thanks. We dancers have so much to be grateful for: “Thank you for reminding my family to dance on Thanksgiving. It’s become a tradition. We don’t Turkey Trot, but we sure dance big time between dinner and pumpkin pie. This year it was raining. 14 of us put on the rain gear, went out on the deck and danced.” -- Katherine Beiers, past mayor of Santa Cruz. Mike is thankful this year for ”all the golfing and dancing that I do. I’m dancing 6 to 7 days a week, sometimes twice a day. Whenever I’m dancing, I turn into a better version of me.” I myself am grateful for -- - my assistant Mike, a treasure, indefatigably positive even when we goof up steps, harmonious and friendly who enjoys welcoming new dancers and continually learns new skills. - every dancer who bravely walked through our dance class door, taking that hardest step of all... showing up. - my own progress in developing our dance program...trying many things, learning from our many mistakes with a forgiving audience. Now that we’ve chronicled this crazy, 2021 Quarantine Year of partner dancing, Here’s my dance predictions for the new year. I predict that, armed with vaccinations, our social dance army will continue growing in numbers, health and happiness as a primal outlet of creativity and joy in our lives. So let’s sing what we look forward to: In our twelve months of 2022 my partners dance with me: - 12 Viennese Waltz Spins - 11 Redowa leaping - 10 Cupid Shuffles - nine Oslo Waltz Mixers - eight Crazy Swing Moves - seven Tokyo Polkas - six Chaos Mixers - FIVE – GREY – WHALE - TANGOS - four Turning Boxes - three Cowboy Cha-Chas - two NightClub 2-Steps - and “Jerusalema” under a pear tree So there you have our New Year gift of dance to you. From every corner of our planet, undersea creatures of Monterey Bay, to Amazon jungle tribes, to Shanghai university halls, dancing connects our spirits in in a kinetic celebration of life, our gift to the world. Jump into the joy with us in 2022. |
FOOT Notes from Teacher PeggyAuthorPeggy Pollard has been teaching social/ballroom dance in Santa Cruz since 2010. Archives
September 2022
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